— by Michael A. Graham
Is “Natural Theology” Fallen Theology? Recovering God’s “Natural” in Light of the Resurrection
In recent decades, there has been a growing conversation about the recovery of natural theology in the Evangelical Church. I think of prominent voices like Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, and others who have reintroduced natural theology as a respectable discipline within Evangelical theology. On the surface this seems like a good thing. Natural theology—the appeal to God’s creation, reason, and conscience to support belief in God—has a long and respectable history in the Church. From Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Calvin, many church fathers appealed to natural revelation as foundational to Christian belief.
Yet I wonder: is not this recovery of natural theology, so persuasive in our contemporary setting, actually a subtle form of Fallen theology? That is, is not the renewed interest in natural theology an expression of our own natural, fallen minds—our prideful desire to secure our belief in God apart from God’s self-disclosure in the Resurrection of His Son?
In this brief article, I will ask questions of critique about this retrieval of “Natural Theology” (I will not keep on italicizing natural from here) in the light of what God has revealed in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord? I want to explore how the categories of ” Natural ” and ” Fallen ” theology can help us think more carefully about the relationship between reason and revelation, creation and redemption, and nature and grace.
Now, this is not so much a scholarly engagement with the fine points of natural theology as a pastoral meditation. I write as a pastor first and foremost. And I write in order to raise questions, not necessarily to provide neat and tidy answers.
What Is Natural Theology?
Let me first briefly define what is meant by natural theology in this discussion. According to theologians and philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and more recently, Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, natural theology is the belief that humans can attain knowledge of God’s existence and attributes through reason alone, apart from any special divine revelation.
Natural theology, as traditionally understood, holds that reason provides access to knowledge of God. Such knowledge is “natural” in the sense that it is available to all human beings as rational creatures. In other words, God has inscribed His existence and His attributes in creation itself—in the cosmos, in conscience, in reason—and therefore these divine realities are knowable apart from Scripture and the Gospel.
The classical arguments for God’s existence—the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, the ontological argument—are all examples of natural theology. These arguments seek to establish God’s existence on the basis of reason and observable facts about the world, not on the basis of Scripture or revelation.
And it is not surprising that over the past few decades there has been something of a renewed interest in natural theology in Evangelical Protestant circles. For much of the 20th century, the prevailing attitude in American Evangelicalism was skeptical of natural theology. Figures like Karl Barth were influential in warning about the dangers of “natural revelation” and the human attempt to know God apart from Christ. But more recently, with figures like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig gaining prominence in philosophical and apologetic circles, there has been a resurgence of interest in the rational arguments for God’s existence.
This resurgence may have something to do with the rise of the “new atheism” in our culture and the felt need to defend Christian belief in the public square through rational argument and evidence. So it is in response to Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens that apologists have felt compelled to dust off the classical arguments for God’s existence and present them as viable and persuasive to the skeptical mind.
Is Natural Theology Fallen Theology?
But now I want to ask a somewhat different question. Is not the attempt to argue for God’s existence on the basis of reason apart from revelation—is not this, at its heart, an expression of the human condition in its fallen state? In other words, is not natural theology, at its very core, actually fallen theology?
Let me explain what I mean. In the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, what is it that the serpent offers to Adam and Eve? The serpent says: “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of the tree, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).
This is the fundamental lie of the Fall: that humans can acquire knowledge that was not given by God, that we can ascend to divine knowledge through our own reasoning and effort, that we can become like God by knowing “good and evil” apart from dependence upon God. The disobedience of Adam and Eve—their eating from the forbidden tree—was the primal assertion of human autonomy. It was the claim that we can know God and His will apart from His gift of self-revelation.
Now is this not the very essence of what natural theology attempts? Natural theology claims that reason—human reason—can discover God. That from the created order itself, from the cosmos and from conscience, humans can arrive at knowledge of the divine. Is this not, in its most fundamental form, the attempt to know God apart from God’s gift of self-revelation? Is it not a form of what Genesis calls the serpent’s lie?
If we believe that the Fall did not just affect moral choice but affected our entire understanding of reality—including our reason and our perception—then how can reason, as fallen, hope to discover God? How can a fallen mind, darkened by sin, actually perceive the divine? The very claim that human reason can discern God seems to assume that human reason is, in its fundamental orientation, not darkened by sin, but rather capable and sound.
But if we accept the biblical claim that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4), then we must ask how natural reason—reason apart from the illumination of the gospel—can hope to perceive God?
The classical arguments for God—the cosmological argument, the teleological argument—may be logically rigorous. They may appeal to our rational sensibilities. But can they actually penetrate the veil of spiritual blindness that the New Testament describes as characteristic of those who are not in Christ? I am skeptical. Very skeptical indeed.
The Resurrection as the Turning Point
But this is where the Resurrection comes in. For the Resurrection is not simply one “fact” among many facts, not simply one “event” among many historical events. The Resurrection is rather the fundamental turning point in human history. It is the great reversal. It is the moment when death itself—the wages of sin—was vanquished and death’s dominion was broken.
And it is in light of the Resurrection that I now wish to reconsider what we might mean by “natural” theology or “natural” revelation.
For in the Resurrection of Christ, God has done something radically new. He has not merely “revealed” Himself from a distance, as it were, through the cosmos or through conscience. Rather, in the Resurrection, God has invaded history in a decisive and transformative way. In the Resurrection, God has stepped into human time and human space and has acted decisively to break the power of sin and death. In the Resurrection, God has opened a new path for human beings, a way to be restored to the image of God that was lost in Adam.
Now I want to argue that it is only in light of the Resurrection that we can properly speak of “natural” revelation or “natural” theology. For the Resurrection fundamentally changes what we mean by “natural.”
In the biblical narrative, there are two “natures.” There is the nature that is darkened by sin and death—the “old nature” or “fallen nature.” And there is the nature that is restored and redeemed in Christ—the “new nature” or renewed nature—the nature as God intends it to be. There is the nature as it exists under the curse, under the dominion of death. And there is the nature as it exists in Christ, under the dominion of life and resurrection.
Now, in light of the Resurrection, what is truly “natural” is the life that flows from the Resurrection of Christ. What is truly “natural” is the restoration of human nature as God designed it. The cosmos itself will be renewed. The very creation that groans under the curse will be redeemed and restored. This is what the apostle Paul describes in Romans 8:19-21: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.”
So if we are to speak of “natural” theology at all, in light of the Resurrection, it must be theology rooted in the person of Christ and in His resurrection life. It is not a natural theology based on the attempt of reason to discover God apart from revelation. Rather, it is a theology whose very foundation is the gift of God’s self-revelation in Christ, the Risen One.
In other words, God’s revelation in the Resurrection does not merely supplement or add to what reason might discover about God through the cosmos and conscience. Rather, it transforms and reorients our entire understanding of what is “natural.” In Christ, we now know that what is truly natural is to live in dependence upon the self-revelation of God. What is truly natural is to live coram Deo—before the face of God—as we were always meant to live. And when Christ, who is our life, appears, we also will appear with Him in glory (Col. 3:4), fully glorified in soul and body—fully and truly human at last, basking in the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever. ✝